easy LOVE easy NO is a BAD ENDING
by Alei-lei
Summary: She hasn't changed a bit.


She hasn't changed a bit.

"You're in my domain now, bi－" a wicked curve of the lips cuts through the threat. "－Iori-kun," she finishes, slow and sweet like molasses.

* * *

It occurs to you that the only face in this godawful place is hers. Everything else is broken, ruined, pale, nothing more than a subservient pig to the whims of the corporation.

Her?

She's damned crazy, that's what she is.

* * *

It is currently zero days since anything that required you to fight has reared its ugly head at you.

If you could measure their outfits against yours, they'd be Ten-stars.

Ten-stars. Ten-star Uniforms. You could barely get to five.

Of course, REVOCS doesn't play child games. Their experiments are on a much higher level than that of what you were doing at Honnouji, and it suddenly hits you: you were all much too small for the big kids' playground.

Nui Harime is testament to this.

She cuts them down, all of them, to the marrow. She sprays blood all over the walls and you can't hear her laugh but you know this amuses her greatly.

She had been quite peeved to learn that the R & D Department had launched the experiment without her express blessing.

And with the ease of a woman who has gone through tedious everyday motions, she looks back at you and says "Ah, you were there the whole time, Iori-kun?" as though there weren't a thousand highly dangerous test subjects coming at her like American linebackers.

One jumps at her from a different angle than the others, but before you are able to say anything, she pirouettes, brings down her scissor blade in a sharp motion, and more blood is on the walls.

She takes your arm, and you follow her to safety.

It is several hours later that you realize that there is not a speck of blood on you.

She probably didn't mean to do that.

* * *

It is several minutes into the attack, and you're in the most heavily guarded place in the Testing Center: the Control Room. Normally personnel come here to watch security feed, but because of the Control Room's exclusive location, it's used as a safe room when something goes wrong.

It serves the latter purpose at this moment.

You watch in one of the chairs; security is helping to neutralize the test subjects, you can see that on several of the screens.

The north wing's security cameras are located on the north wall, the west security cameras on the west wall, so on and so forth.

You're not quite sure where you are, but you're watching her mow down more test subjects.

Her progress is quick, but you don't know where all these test subjects are pouring from. Someone tells you that they gathered about ten thousand people for this specific experiment, and you bristle for a brief moment.

And then you see her.

She's come up against a particularly difficult batch, and by batch it's a set of minor annoyances led by a major annoyance, and you quietly cheer her on as she goes up against him.

And you watch her.

The strange way she moves, as though she could be still and then be in another spot in the next nanosecond.

But of course, REVOCS does not disappoint.

The test subject feints right, left, up, and when she thinks he's going for a shot at her legs, she shifts to accommodate a jab to his underbelly, enough to leave her left side open.

The test subject socks her right in the eye.

Nobody is surprised when he ends up a puddle by the end of the day.

* * *

She's stuck in your mind.

The security cameras caught everything, from start to finish: which of the test subjects went haywire first, which of the halls were rendered completely impassable, whoever was lazing around the lounge getting coffee or hitting on cute security personnel, and most importantly, what she looked like after the hit.

The impact created a crater a foot-and-a-half deep and six feet across, and it was shaped just like her. You only found this out when repairs were being done all over the Testing Center.

She'd looked absolutely livid.

There was blood everywhere: on her dress, on her face and arm and on the floor. There was still blood pouring out her face when she'd calmed down enough to realize she was beating up on a puddle of goo on the floor.

She'd left soon after, and against all the philosophies you'd ever lived by, you followed her and the trail of blood she'd left behind.

But the trail ended a few halls down, and she had disappeared.

You didn't get to see her for a month.

* * *

When people spread the news that she's returned, you almost drop your coffee.

* * *

There is no love lost between either of you.

But she looks beautiful with her hair down.

They were right; she was back, worse than ever before. She looks different now, much more dangerous.

But you stay.

"...Iori-kun."

"...Yes?"

"Is there something you need?"

You hold out an eyepatch－a spitting image of the one she had previously allowed to get pummeled into her skull.

But all of a sudden she's in front of you, one arm making its way up your back and the other cupping your cheek and you realize she is colder than Death itself.

"Iori," she whispers into your ear.

Death, soft and sweet and dangerous.

"what do you think?"

She has deceptively soft hands for someone with so much blood on them.

"Do you think I'm beautiful?"

And her face－half of her pretty face, with dead flesh creating the ugliest of landscapes on the other half. You can still see where someone scored a hit since Isshin Matoi's last stand.

"Iori."

You look back at her one eye.

"Answer me."

And it takes you eternity to say something, so she just kisses you with cold lips and is done with it.

* * *

Apparently the insurgence was caused by several traitors in line with Nudist Beach.

The higher-ups stick Harime with cleanup, and decide to sink a boat and rearrange office mates.

* * *

She gets a new eyepatch.

Well, it's more of a mask now.

It covers the upper left side of her face (apparently that last test subject was wearing brass knuckles with the ability to halt Life Fiber activity) and you feel a lot less uneasy around her.

But she still scares you.

* * *

You're not quite sure how she got you into bed, but, well, here you are. In her bed. In her arms.

"You saw?" she asks into your collarbone. Both of you are completely naked－that can only mean one thing－and you are reminded that she is cold. Memories of last night come back to you in muddled bits and pieces; her lips begging for yours, her arms never letting you put an inch between you and her, your clothes reduced to strings on the floor.

And her eye. The eye she lost fighting Isshin Matoi. The eye that made her mark Ryuko Matoi for death.

When you'd touched the fabric over her eye, she'd clammed up. She retreated, away from the bed, away from you.

You followed her to the veranda, where she stood watching the skyline and the dead world you were born into.

And you remembered that she was beautiful.

You wrapped your arms around her, kissing the back of her neck and thinking to yourself that she was beautiful.

And she was beautiful.

She was beautiful.

So beautiful.

* * *

**Notes: **

yeah.

for everyone on tumblr, yeah.

the title comes from the second volume of zaregoto.

This was written before any of the last ten-or-so episodes were released, so it's not really canon-compliant


End file.
